Paulla Fowler
Message to Prepare for Future Challenges
March 11, 2012
MBA 6006

Nayar at HCL Technologies prides himself and his office on being transparent. They encourage their employees to be responsible for their actions: Through the value portal where employees and customers collaborate together to develop new innovations. With the improved use the of Blue Print portal for the main managers peer-to-peer reviews to create new innovations. To the various forms of internal and external messaging used on a local bases to improve overall employee passion and customer satisfaction.
In 2006 the CEO had recast the role of his office and transferred the responsibility for change on to his employees for many initiatives. One example is that of the value portal. The company wanted to change the relationship with their customer by enabling them to be more responsible for their partnership with the company. Nayar wanted his customers to be actively involved while also challenging his employees to go beyond their defined roles and responsibility. He accomplished this by creating a portal that could be used between customers and employees. This portal the “Value Portal” allowed customers to evaluate and rate the new ideas that HCLT employees generated. The portal was very successful and hundreds of HCLT customers join and thousands of ideas were generated with a potential savings of hundreds of millions of dollars(Nayar, V. 2010) . With this success Nayar felt his employees were ready for bigger responsibility, he felt that it was time to become more transparent and that his employees should share in the responsibility for the company’s strategy.
With the success of the Value Portal, Nayar had decided that he would change how his managers would use the My Blueprint concept in 2009. He once again felt like his offices needed to become even more transparent. That his managers would benefit from building a relationship with other managers in contrasting fields and possibly trigger new innovations off each other. Nayar hoped the new blueprint concept would bring the managers closer to the value zone, from a top-down management system, to managers giving peer-to peer reviews via recordings saved on the Internet (Nayar, V. 2010). The concept was a success managers were now addressing their business analysis more in depth whereas before they would talk more about what they hoped to accomplished. Employees and managers caught on to the opportunity of these recordings and discussed with each other their understanding of the future, unlike before employees did not know what other parts of the organization were doing. My Blue Print allowed new employees the opportunity to get connected to the team and understand what has been accomplished and what they want to be accomplished. Where before new employees had no idea what lead up to the development of an innovation or where a division was heading.
My Blue Print also gave people the opportunity to take ownership for their projects and align themselves better with the plans of the company, such as the merger and acquisitions of AXON. With AXON being more successful at SAP consulting HCLT focused on integrating them into HCLT instead of making the same mistakes that most corporations make. HCLT took twenty-five hundred people from HCLT and put them into AXON organization to acquire the knowledge of the SAP software. The merger was such a success customers recognized the advantages of the value package and their stock prices rose (Nayar, V. 2010).
After the first few acquisition Nayar, deeply believed that the only way to manage these companies was to transfer the responsibility to his employees for three reasons: power of the value zone, speed, and knowledge (Nayar, V. 2010). Nayar believe the CEO office was to far away from the customers to understand the customers’ desire. They could send internal and external messages but the true value of the customers’ knowledge relied on the employees’ direct contact. The speed of implementing changes can also be a hinder by the excessive internal or external messaging from the CEO office. Where change could be handled faster on a local level, benefiting the customer and the company. The last reason Nayar felt that his employees understood the economy they were working in better than the CEO office (Nayar, V. 2010). A business strategy in Paris may not fit in New Delhi as the cultural values and beliefs in these countries may differ (Hickman, 2010 p.29)
Along with being more responsible HCL Technologies firmly believes employees are their best source for creative ideas. One way for IT employees to communicate their ideas with there peers thru “Straight Talk.” Straight Talk was designed for members of the IT community to communicate openly. The CIO officer of HCL Technology states that the IT professionals can learn from honest and open communication with other IT professionals better than any profession in the same industry. Straight Talk allows IT professionals to debate new ideas. This communication tool is still evolving at HCL Technologies like that of Wikiportal did for the sales community at HCLT. Wikiportal was developed in September 2011, this portal allows employees to improve sales productivity, by connecting with the global sales team with the right people and access the right information (Shivashankar, S. July 25, 2011).
Along with the Wiki page that HCLT has for its sales professional, employees at HCLT creating a social networking site. This networking site was developed by its employees to help get connected and drive collaboration. The social network “Meme” has well over 28,000 members, who are able to collaborate with other employees and share common interests (Shivashankar, S. July 25, 2011).
Another innovation that HCLT uses to get their employees to foster innovation and creativity is the use of blogs. HCLT has 3 blogs: Leadership, ERS blog, TMPE blog. The leadership blog is not only for the boardroom management, it is for members of the community that employees respect and want to emulate. The leadership blog is used for real life examples of encounters that management and employees encounter daily, for management and employees to learn from. The ERS blog is for engineers to think out of the box. The site provides blogs that are related to engineering. The last blog aims to share provocative ideas of the Telecom, Media, Entertainment, and publishing industries. This blog is much like that of the Wikiportal for leaders and experts in the communication industry. The blog allows for an open arena to express and debate over trends, challenges, innovations, and the future of the industry (Shivashankar, S. July 25, 2011).
With all these communication avenues and Nayar’s dedication from the CEO’s office to stay transparent, HCLT has a bright future. The company is dedicated to their employee’s growth and creativity. Their dedication to employee responsibility can been seen in the value portal, when thousands of customers join and employees save the company millions of dollars. The success of the Blue Print portal when managers are more specific in there business analysis and peers are learning from them. To the open communication that HCTL has with all their divisions through multiple avenues.
References

Hickman, G (2010) Leading Organizations Perspectives For A New Era. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Nayar,V. (2010). Recasting the Role of the CEO. Transferring the Responsibility for Change. How Leaders can tap the Creative Energy of Employees. Harvard Business Press.

Nidumolu,R.,Prahalad, C.K.,and Rangaswami,M.R (September 2009).Why Sustainability is now the Key Driver of Innovation. Harvard Business Review.

Shivashankar, S. (July 25, 2011). Sustainability 2011. HCLT Retrieved from: www. Hcltec.com